


Twilight in the Afternoon

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [6]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Blindfolds, Bondage, F/M, Feelings, Knifeplay, Oral Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:15:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So far, with this Thing, it's been about giving Beth what she wants. And that's fine. That's more than fine. But Daryl is starting to wonder if he's allowed to pursue his own particular interests in this situation. </p><p>Even if it pushes things a little further.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight in the Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> Not much to say, except it's five hours to the MSP AND I THINK PORN WITH A SIDE OF SWEETNESS/HAPPINESS IS APPROPRIATE RIGHT NOW
> 
> Title from Thomas Dolby's ["Oceanea".](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r20pt1wMwRM) If you listen and the mood startles you - in the context of a fic centered around knifeplay - I can only say that this thing ended up being way _gentler_ than I expected. And I think that's more than okay.

He asks her about it first.

This is actually pretty new. Not the talking, not all the myriad tiny ways in which he checks in with her before and during and after, not the hundred other ways they have of communicating. They’ve gotten good at those and at doing them, because he has a hard time saying certain things in certain ways, having certain conversations, and that was true before he started doing things to her while she has a thick strip of cloth between her teeth.

He knows her. She knows him. That means something different from what it used to.

So in a thousand ways, this is an immense ongoing conversation. Ongoing for weeks and weeks now. Autumn is settling in, and the days are still warm but there’s a crispness in the air that hints gently at the cold that’s coming. Strangely it’s the temperature change that makes him think about it, more and more - time and what its passage means, and this odd and wonderful thing their lives are becoming. When they started this it was in a stuffy toolshed that had more in common with an oven and they were both dripping with sweat, when he first put his hand on her throat it was a muggy night in late summer, and somehow the heat was a wave that carried them through it. Buzzed into his head and reduced his tolerance for her, made him drunk on her. Got rid of some inhibitions, maybe.

Or maybe that was just him. Her. Maybe this has always been there in both of them, buried not like a corpse to be dug up but like a seed waiting to grow into something beautiful and alive.

He’d like to believe that. It’s easier than it was. He no longer thinks something like this just comes out of nowhere. And it’s been a long, _long_ time since he thought of this as something ugly.

Now it’s getting cooler, and this thing is getting deeper and harder and softer and more quiet all at once. When he does what he does to her there’s not as much in the way of trembling, not as much in the way of nerves. His stomach no longer somersaults when she lets out a breathy little cry of pain. He _wants_ that cry, and when he goes about getting it from her his technique has subtly changed. He was always careful with her, always had a laser-focus on every detail, but now that care is cooler. More relaxed.  More confident. He’s meticulous. He knows just how to hit her and how hard and how fast, and when to do all variations of those things. His timing has improved. He’s gotten very, very good with knots, and with getting her out of them quickly.

He likes being good at things. Always has. For a long time his sense of self-worth was measured according to what he could do. He was a living, breathing tool. Not always set to the best uses, but whatever he had to do, he tried to do it well. Unless it no longer seemed to matter. Unless he lost faith.

He believes in this.

And usually, there’s enough trust in them and between them to the point where he doesn’t feel the need to ask her about it first. Not in words. _This is what I want to do, is it alright?_ The truth is that he likes surprising her. It’s like a gift he gets to unwrap in front of her.

This, though.

He can’t cut her clothes off her all the time, because it’s not like you can run down to Walmart whenever you want and just pick up more, but when he can, he loves doing it. He doesn’t know why and he doesn’t even want to look into it all that deeply; he just does. At first it was utility. It was easiest. But maybe it was actually never about that, or not about that alone. He thinks back to that first time in the shadows under the trees, when the blade was so close to her skin and she was trying so hard not to squirm. What he felt then, which he still doesn’t know how to define. Dizzy, almost. He didn’t want to cut her. It wasn’t about that.

It wasn’t about that at all.

He’s not afraid of it. He’s very determined not to be. At first he told himself this was about her, about exploring what she wanted, about _giving_ her what she wanted, about making her happy, which is all he wants to do in the world. Pretty much all he lives for, now.

But it wasn’t just about her. It isn’t. He’s realized that. Because that first time, he used the belt on her. No one told him to do that. She didn’t ask him to. It was a giant step.

He took it on his own.

He wants this. He wants it. He wants to _do this to her._

So he asks her about it first. Haltingly. Struggling for the words. Trying to explain himself and knowing the attempt is a futile one. And though he’s not afraid, he’s wondering - a tiny bit - if there really is something wrong with him.

And she places her fingertips over his lips and she gives him that smile that never fails to absolutely melt him inside. And she says _Yeah_.

_Of course._

~

He thinks about beds now in ways he never thought he would. That’s true of a lot of things, but it’s especially true of beds, especially of his bed, especially of hers – they’re not _quite_ yet at the point where they’re fully sharing all the time though he thinks that’s not far off – and here in his room in the middle of a sunny afternoon he’s thinking about beds in terms of how someone can be tied to them, and he’s grateful that he has one that allows for this with relative ease.

Because that’s something else he’s never done before. He’s tied her, tied her hands behind her back, pinned them over her head, and he’s started considering what he might be able to do with her ankles and thighs in a more creative capacity. But he hasn’t yet tied her like this.

Stretched out on her back, wrists and ankles to corresponding corners. She's spread-eagled. He looks at her for a moment and realizes he’s never before immobilized her this completely.

He’s not sure what to make of that.

He can look at her and she can’t look back, because while he hasn’t gagged her – this time – he tied a bandanna over her eyes, and not being able to see them when she looks at him, and knowing that she can’t see him at _all,_ that she won’t have any fucking idea what he’s doing it until he does it…

He’s not sure what to make of that either.

 _God, why the fuck do you_ want _this,_ he thinks again, and then he’s leaning over her, one knee on the bed, and the instant she feels the mattress dip under his weight she’s gasping. Arching her neck. He sees the muscles of her arms and legs straining slightly as she pulls on her bonds, and a smile passes across her face and he knows without having to go any further that he’s going to be doing this again.

He maybe shouldn’t assume. But it’s not about assuming. He knows her. He’s beginning to _really_ know himself. So he just knows.

The house is empty for the moment. Everyone is out doing whatever they have to be doing. Maggie is watching Judith. It’s just them, and while the curtains are drawn they're not opaque and he left the window open, and when the cool breeze eases itself into the room and sweeps across her naked skin he sees it rise into gooseflesh. Watches it, the wave of it, fascinated by her.

Wondering if he could do that to her. Make her skin do that. How light he could make the touch and still send that wave lapping across her body. Make her shiver, make her completely unable to control it.

“Daryl,” she breathes, and lifts her hips an inch or so off the bed. He watches her do it with the same fascination; she was ready for it, _wanting_ it, as soon as he started tying her wrists. She didn’t have to say anything. He could practically smell it on her. When he spread her legs and tied them open her head rolled and he knew she was a lost cause. Now he reaches between her thighs with his free hand and when his fingertip grazes her clit, parts her lips and slides into her cunt and she sucks in a hard gasp, he actually grins.

Didn’t use to smile a whole lot, let alone grin. Another thing that’s changed.

“What?” Like he has no idea what she’s talking about. His finger pushes deeper, crooks upward just a touch, and she lets out a loose moan and something that might be _god please._

He hasn’t yet made it a thing, forcing her to beg him – beg _for_ him – but that’s something else that might have to change.

He withdraws his finger and rests its tip on her lips. Immediately she parts them, makes a low, hungry noise as she sucks herself off it. Swirl of her tongue against its pad and it’s so tempting to replace it with something else – but it’s way too soon for that.

She has a word. He gave it to her, laughed a little when he came up with it. He knows about safewords, at least has heard vaguely of them though only in a joking capacity, and he realized very early on that in this context shaking her head won’t work. She might be doing a lot of that, and there will be times when she’ll have to keep herself very still, other times when he might be too focused on something else to watch for that, and anyway her mouth is free. She’ll be able to tell him.

And he’s not sure _no_ or _stop_ will work here.

It’s silly. It’s a stupid joke. Maybe that’s why it works.

He leans close to her and places a soft kiss against her jaw, the corner of her mouth. “Say it,” he murmurs.

He feels her smile. Feels her chest hitch in something close to a laugh. “Moonshine.”

He strokes his fingertips down her cheek. “Good girl.”

He’s never said that to her before. Not like that. It comes out without him meaning for it to do so, and just for a second he’s a little stunned by it and by how much he likes how it sounds. It sounds – it feels – _right._ It belongs. She’s his girl, she always is, but that means something different here.

She’s _his girl._ She’s _his._ She’s his to play with. He can hurt her. He can make her feel good. He knows how to do both. He could do them simultaneously.

He sits up, reaches over to the table by the bed, and picks up the knife.

It’s not his. It’s hers. His is large, heavy, and he thinks it might be a bit too unwieldy for this. He needs something he can control down to the millimeter. And when it occurred to him, when he realized he was really going to _do_ this, there was something about the prospect of using her own knife on her that appealed to him in a way he doesn’t fully understand. Something almost…

He’s become keenly aware of what a thick cable of trust binds them together now. Somehow it feels like a part of that.

She trusts him. If anything makes him brave with her, it’s that. She trusts him, and bit by bit she’s teaching him to trust himself. So it’s not nearly as hard as it would once have been to lower the edge of the blade to her ribs and scrape it slowly across her skin.

She doesn’t jump, but he can feel how she almost does – stops herself at the last minute and wraps it up inside herself. The sound she makes is muffled behind her bitten lip. Still slow – slow as he reasonably can – he drags the blade up and up until it’s resting between her breasts, where he stops, lifts it and angles it down, and presses the point of it lightly against her sternum.

She was taking a breath. Abruptly she stops. He glances at her left arm and it’s shaking – probably for any number of reasons. If he wasn’t so focused on this he might ask her to enumerate them. But this… He stares down at her, watches the faint flush blooming around the little white lines of scratched skin the blade’s serrations left behind. For a moment – wild and half feverish – he imagines drawing on her, writing on her skin, watching the red flow in and then fade. Beautiful arcs and swirls, sweeping over her. Flowing like water. He’s not an artist, not anything even close to it – not a bone of that in his rough body and he knows it, or he’s pretty goddamn sure – but in this moment he wants to _celebrate_ her, and he thinks he might understand what people mean when they refer to a _muse._

He almost asks her if she’s all right. Then he looks at her, at the way her mouth is hanging loosely open, her breath coming tight and shallow, blushing all the way down over her chest, and he knows she is.

So he moves on to her breasts.

There’s no plan here. He’s moving on pure instinct, shifting to things as they attract his attention, and almost from the beginning he loved how sensitive her nipples are, how they react to the lightest touch. How quickly they harden when he so much as strokes them with a thumb. He spirals the blade up over the slight swell of her and feels her tight little breaths getting tighter and tighter, almost edging into whimpers, and when the knife’s point reaches the pink edge of her areola she actually lets out a whine, and for the first time – as a shiver surges through her – he senses the smallest taut thread of fear.

Not real fear. Not like she actually thinks he’d do something. He intuits this with the same certainty he felt before, though part of him is still less than certain. But he has her. He could do anything. That fact alone has to be thrumming through her with every rhythmic rush of her blood, and when it thrums through _him_ it’s a hot pulse straight down to his cock. He almost gasps.

He has to stay focused. He has to.

Point right into the center of her nipple. Pressing. Pressing until her whine becomes a panicked little squeal and then he’s glad he gave her the word, glad because she’s shaking her head and whimpering _God Daryl please no_ and just for a cold instant he almost does stop.

But he has to trust her.

He lets up. A little. He looks up at her face and now she’s sweating in spite of the breeze, little beads of it standing out on her skin. Moving slowly, that familiar cool fascination settling into him, he drags a fingertip over her collarbone and brings it to his lips. Tastes her.

She’s subsided. A bit. Her breath is still coming in strained pants, but the whimpering is gone. Like this, with every one of her movements tense, with her so clearly struggling for control, he notices each one so much more clearly. All the definition is sharper. Each little rise and fall of her breasts as she breathes. The lines of the tendons in her throat. The curves of her biceps. The dip of her waist and soft swells of her hips. He slides his gaze downward and over her lower belly, the tightly curled hair between her thighs, over her spread legs, the way her knees are slightly bent as if she’s trying to draw them up to her chest and protect herself. Very possibly she is.

This might be the furthest he’s ever pushed her. And she didn’t ask for it. _He_ wanted this.

He touches his fingertips to her mouth. “Remember?”

Nothing. Then, slowly, she nods, and he’s calm again.

And he goes back to work.

This is exploring her all over again. He spent so much time on that when they were first figuring each other out, figuring out how to be together and what they both wanted. What felt good. What felt best. He spent hours learning her, touching her everywhere she would let him, familiarizing himself with every angle and every curve. She seemed a little unsure about that at first, but she wanted to do the same to him, so in the end they would spend entire evenings just lying together and using their hands on each other – not fucking and not even kissing, and sometimes they would come and sometimes they wouldn’t, and in the end those were some of the happiest times he can remember. They were unhurried. All their desperation evaporated and it was like they built a different world in which to be. He’s never had any illusion about the ultimate limits of their power to protect each other, but it was always nice – for a little while – to pretend that nothing and no one else could touch either of them.

This is like that. And nothing like it. Those early times she could touch him back. Now it’s him, just him, tracing her with the edge of the blade, drawing the outlines of her breast onto her skin, and she twists and trembles and tries not to do either, and now and then he can hear her chanting _no no no no_ under her breath.

And he doesn’t believe her for a second. Not when she sounds like she does.

It’s when he starts moving downward – almost half unaware he’s doing it with any specificity, simply lost in the wonder of what he has here – that she really starts to be afraid.

He pauses and looks up. It still doesn’t feel like genuine fear – he _knows_ what it’s like when she’s truly scared, how her body and breath and voice change – but it’s so much more intense, vibrating inside her like someone is sending an electrical current down through her from her head, and he waits to hear her use the word. Waits for it and thinks he’ll feel no surprise when he hears it, and knows he’ll feel no disappointment. This is a _huge_ step, bigger than binding her hands with the belt that first time. Maybe she’s not ready. Maybe she’ll never be ready. That’s all right.

But it doesn’t come. She just lies there, little panting, terrified breaths, and now he can hear the excitement under the surface. So clear and so heady that he doesn’t know why he didn’t detect it before.

He reaches up once more and touches her mouth with his free hand. _Remember?_

She nods. Once.

He keeps going.

He’s very aware. He’s very conscious. But later he’ll understand that he was also in a kind of trance, and the rest of the world slipped away. The room and what lies beyond it. What they’ve done and what they still have to do. His own body, the way he’s so hard it’s almost painful and he has been for a while. The way he’s dimly _aching_ to come, to come inside her, in her mouth, on her skin, doesn’t care how, but _doesn’t care_ is sort of the operationally important term.

This is everything.

Wide, looping patterns on the inside of her thighs. Settled between her legs like he is, he’s spoiled for choice in a way he wasn’t before. He can feel the faint smile tugging at his own mouth as he draws a curved road up to her cunt and she practically sobs his name. She’s _so_ wet; he can see it glistening on her, and moving with such extreme delicacy he catches a bead of it on the point of the blade, barely even touching her. But she lets out a little cry, shock and panic and _need_ , and he actually laughs, low and pleased. _Pleased._

And licks her off the knife.

The truth is that he had no idea how this was going to go. Not really. It was a shot in the dark, the kind of risk one always takes when one elects to bring fantasy into flesh, make it hot and gasping and real. And this is perfect. He can’t imagine anything that would make it better. Except if she could see him, maybe; watch him and know what’s coming and what she can’t stop, as he pushes the point of the knife so, so lightly against her clit.

 _Daryl._ It’s rough, harsh, and with a hot rush of arousal he can tell she’s barely keeping it out of the realm of a scream. Using all her remaining strength to do so. _Daryl oh God no please please_ God _no no no._

So of course he does it again, and the noise she makes is like nothing he’s ever heard before. She sobs, begs him, twists into incoherence, and when he does it a third time she cries out loudly enough that he actually worries a little about someone hearing them and thinking something _really_ wrong is going on.

Hell, maybe it is. Right now it’s not like he cares. And she’s been so good, he thinks as he pulls the knife back. She’s been so, so good for him and she’s let him do whatever he wanted to her, and he shouldn’t just leave her like this, so the knife goes back on the table and he goes back between her legs, and as she’s letting out huge breaths of what sounds like desperate relief he lowers his mouth to her and gives her his tongue.

And it’s literally seconds before she comes.

She floods into his mouth. He’s actually startled, actually freezes up for a second. He’s used to a slight rush of wet when she comes like this, but this is something else - warm and slick and salty-sweet - and once he can focus again he slides his hands under her ass and _lifts_ her, mouth hard on her, tonguing her through wave after wave. She’s practically _wailing_ , every muscle in her body tight as a bowstring, and she _has_ to be audible to someone outside, but he doesn’t give a shit because this is fucking amazing. Lifting her like a cup, as much as he can.

Drinking from her. This is something he thinks about a lot. This is something he thinks about almost every time.

It takes her a while to come back. He feels it happen, lying with his head on the inside of her thigh, tracing the swirling marks he made on the other one with an idle fingertip. He doesn’t fully remember the transition from one to the other. He just knows he can feel her now, loosening, her breathing deeper. Little shivers working through her. The skin under his fingers prickles and he smiles.

This is everything he wanted.

Almost.

He moves back up her body in a slow wave, like her trembling is sending him. He’s low against her, mouth on her every few inches. The marks he’s left grab him, hold him, drag him down, and he traces the harsher ones with his tongue. Soothes them. She’s whispering now, though he has no idea what she’s saying, and he wonders if she even does. Before she was rigid, stiff as a board; now there’s no trace of muscle tension in her. She’s a rag doll. If he lifted her into his arms she’d probably be dead weight.

She’s not. Not ever. He’s never going to _let_ her be that, and to hell with whatever reality insists; she’s _alive,_ she’s painfully so, sharp enough to cut him, and as he pushes back from her and strips off his shirt, goes to work on his pants, he feels that pain. His own, the one she gives him. Every second with her is like that. It aches everywhere, aches in a way he can’t get enough of, and maybe it’s part of what led to this. Why he understands how someone wants this. Why he does.

It hurts to look at her, the ache _deep_. Loose and helpless in the afternoon sun bleeding through the curtains. How beautiful she is. How he loves her so much he has no idea what to do with it, except give her this. Try to show her. It’s all he’s ever been able to do.

He likes to think he’s getting good at it. Doing okay.

That he’ll get better. So much better.

She parts her lips when he kneels over her and gives her his cock. No hesitation, and he strokes a hand through her hair and sighs, and at the same moment a quiet, happy sound escapes her. This has all been quiet somehow, been gentle in a way nothing else has, and even this part of it fits. Now that he knows he can, he loves fucking her mouth, holding her head in place and using her how he wants, but this isn’t that. The angle is a little awkward but he’s helping her lift her head, softly encouraging her, rolling his hips just enough to make it easier for her. And if she can’t take him as deep as she likes she can still use her tongue and she is, swirling it over him like the patterns he drew on her, and his head drops forward as he groans her name.

_God, Beth. Beth._

Sometimes her name is everything he needs to say.

Even when he comes it’s soft – a low, warm pulse of pleasure from his core out to his fingertips, and his moan is almost like a laugh as he spills into her. At the last moment her head drops back, her mouth still open, and he can watch it, see it on her tongue, and a smaller echo of that pulse shakes him and lets him go.

And every part of this is so sweet.

For a moment he stays like that, one hand braced on the wall over the bed, looking down at her. Entranced. There’s a stray drop of come near her chin, and he lowers himself carefully to her side, pressed against her, and touches her jaw to turn her head toward him, her face to his. Turns her to him so he can lean in and clean it off her with his tongue.

“Daryl,” she breathes, and he’s going to ask her if she’s all right, but when she smiles he knows she is.

So he kisses her for a while. Maybe a long while.

He unties her. Tugs off the blindfold, and she squints and blinks in the sun, so he pulls her against his chest and shields her from it. He strokes her hair and murmurs to her, and if he’s only making any real sense half the time he knows it doesn’t matter. He tells her she’s amazing, she’s incredible; he tells her how beautiful she is and how strong and how much he loves her, how well she did, how proud he is of her, and he feels her smile again – loose and exhausted, but he doesn’t need to see her to know. He doesn’t need to look at her to be sure. It’s all there in her body, in how she curls against him, tucks her head into the hollow of his throat.

He did this, he thinks, running his hands over her – every part of her he can reach. He wanted to do it and he did it. He saw something and he went after it. Not without any thought for her, because the idea of making her do anything she doesn’t want – _anything_ , even the tiniest thing – pretty much horrifies him. But it was him.

He’s allowed to want things. For himself. He’s allowed to _have_ them.

Maybe this shouldn’t be the complete revelation it is.

He curls himself around her and he feels sleep approaching. That’s fine; they can sleep. Maybe until dinner, and maybe they’ll just eat in here. Maybe they won’t go anywhere for a while. He figures that if they both want that, they should both have it.

He doesn’t know what he expected this to be like. But what he didn’t expect, as he starts to drift toward a doze with his miracle girl in his arms, was to feel like this afterward. This kind of peace. This kind of _joy._

Probably he should have.

So he’ll know for next time.


End file.
